The Ottawa Journal from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • Page 6

Ottawa Journal Proprietor, Ottawa Journal division of F.P. Publications (Eastern) Limited 365 Laurler Avenue West. Ottawa KtO 3K6 Telephone 563 3731 A LALONOC. PwMantandPutiMlw' JOHN W. GRACE.

Vlca-proakMnl nd Editorial Editor DAVID I. HUMPHREYS. Managing Editor Saturday, January 14, 1978 Sun Life: symptom, not cause Early reaction to the decision of Sun Life to move Its head office out of Montreal has been heavily weighted toward the negative side, both within Quebec and outside of it. The reaction, was so strong that it isn't surprising the company's directors have agreed at least to go through the formality of reconsidering. They could hardly do less, but it Is difficult at this stage to imagine them doing much more, either.

The sincerity of some of the emotional condemnations and hand-wringing regrets expressed outside Quebec about the decision is suspect, however. It was just too good an opportunity to combine pious assertions of support for national unity with' not-so-pious attacks on a large international company by special Interest groups that rarely pass up a chance to accuse big business of treachery whenever It tries to act in the interests of shareholders. There is of course much to regret about the company's decision, particularly its possible effect on the attitude of French-speaking Quebecers who haven't yet decided to embrace the inward-looking appeal of separatism, but who are nonetheless attracted to It. The doctrine of inevitability of the "francisizatlon" of Quebec's business life, and indeed of separatism itself, certainly won't be undermined by the Sun Life move. Never mind that Jacques Paiizeau, Quebec's finance minister, reacted so bitterly to the decision.

Given the long-term aims of the Parti Quebecois, can Mr. Parizeau really expect major international companies doing most of their business in English to stay in Montreal forever under narrow, restrictive laws laws that affect their ability to do business efficiently? What Mr. Parizeau's reaction suggests is that separatists are understandably schizophrenic on the question of the economic price they must pay for their political doctrine. They Invite the penalty, but don't really like its impact. At the same time, their attitude invites more of the same.

It would be a mistake to reduce the issue entirely to a question of language, important as that is for many head offices facing Quebec's Bill 101. The problem of recruitment of qualified staff grows every month as anglo-phones leave Quebec, and few from other provinces can be found to move there. This problem has been growing for years; it was merely worsened suddenly by the election of a PQ government. The fundamental economic reallty-of the case is easily overlooked by anti-business elements whose ultimate solution for almost every economic problem Is compulsion or nationalization. Mr.

Parizeau's recent fiscal conservatism aside, the fact remains that the PQ government Is perceived by many businessmen as favoring unreliable economic as well as political policies. The Insistence on an exact between business done In Quebec and investment there, for Instance, belles a narrowness which, if practised by all provinces In Canada, could wreck both the economy and the political stability of the country. How Quebec raise badly- Churchillian The first test of art is that it should, please. Graham Sutherland's portrait of Winston Churchill did not please, either Churchill or his wife. It was therefore destroyed.

An act of vandal-Ism, as the artist immodestly called It? Not at all. The Churchills should not have had to endure something they detested a portrait about which Lord Haitsham said at Its unveiling: "It's disgusting, It's ill-mannered, It's terrible." It was a portrait of old age, If not palpable decay: that was not what the Churchills wanted, nor. Indeed, the Houses of Parliament which had commissioned the painting as an 80th birthday present. George Santayana wrote In Life of Reason: "Nothing Is so poor and melancholy as art that Is interested In Itself and not In Its subject." The Churchill portrait was a piece of artistic self-indulgence. Mod- ern artists have been allowed to get away with entirely too' much of that.

The Churchills refused to be Intlmldat- 1 ed. So should more of us. needed money outside of the province if every jurisdiction had the same attitude? Money goes where it can produce the best, safest return. That's why so much, money from Quebec, Ontario and other provinces Is moving into Alberta these days. That's economics at work, not politics.

The propensity to overlook economic' reality in such matters was well illustrated by Premier Levesque who. In the course of a generally restrained reaction to' the Sun Life decision, described it as "political." In terms of the public reaction to Sun Life's decision, the opposite is closer to the truth it was decidedly unpolitical to make that decision. It would be. silly, ol course, to underestimate the importance of the political situation In Quebec as a factor in the company's decision. But it was a case of politics being assessed in the economic terms that politicians so often fall to understand.

The unchanging truth about Investment dollars is that they are a lot easier to chase away than they are to attract. The truth about Quebec Is that it has become almost a textbook example of how to scare off money. If the situation is going to change for the better. Sun Life's decision will have to be more widely understood as a symptom of serious problems, not isolated as a cause of them by scapegoat-hunters on both sides of the Quebec separatism debate. The Super Bowl When Canadian football is in season, it Is judged unpatriotic by some of our sports nationalists to watch such teams as the Miami Dolphins or the.

Oakland Raiders. A passion for the National Football League is, for many, almost a secret affair. There are social pressures against coming to work on a Monday and raving about watching Walter Payton, who deserves every rave, running more than 200 yards. The ultimate anti-nationalist gesture in this country is to watch an NFL game instead of the Grey 'Cup. But since Canadian football has shut down, the NFL afflclonados have been able to dote without shame on the various playoff games and, now, upon the 'prospects of the Dallas Cowboys against the Denver Broncos In the Super Bowl.

Indeed, according to the estimates of the CBC, some four million Canadians will watch Super Bowl XII (the Roman numerals are, of course, part of the ritualistic hype), which is about the same number of viewers drawn to that most Canadian of events, a Stanley Cup playoff game. That figure suggests that NFL football is much more popular than many Canadians might care to admit. The Super Bowls themselves have on the whole been disappointments: the most exciting NFL games over the years have been the divisional playoffs. But no Super Bowl has yet seen the Denver Orange Crush defence. Cool reason says the Cowboys will prevail.

The same reason said that the Broncos should have been eliminated games ago. Whatever, a Super Bowl Is a splendid entertainment for the drag end of a January Sunday afternoon. Four million Canadians can't be wrong. The NFL exerts a social Impact which sociologists (and politicians) have not fully appreciated. The NFL also provides the best football in the world.

Peace, Jake Gaudaur. Notes The shortage of giveaway calendars seems to be more severe than ever this year. Fortunately, there is so far no evidence of any. Increase In the number of people who stumble through life never knowing what day It is, A new low In promotion of entertainment was reached recently when a U. S.

TV station boasted before the program that the adventure story would contain "one of the most expensive battle scenes In history." Even the most unsophisticated viewer knows that the value of presentations Is more often than not In Inverse proportion to the Dumber of dollars spent. 77ie all-knowing doublelalk of economists Smokescreen for every species of greeci AS A STERN public duty, that celebrated economist, Horace Snifkln, undertook to' study and extrapolate the predictions for 1978 of Canada's leading authorities in business, politics and education. He first Interviewed Cornelius Glizzard, the most powerful Industrialist of Ontario, whose infallible' dicta have often shaken the stock market and destroyed many governments at Ottawa. Mr. Glizzard (a modest, thrifty man In private life with only five homes In various countries and even fewer wives) summarized the views of Big Business by candidly asserting, without the By BRUCE HUTCHISON least reservation, that the national economy would move upward or downward In 1978.

Economic growth, he firmly believed, would achieve a rate between one and 10 per cent, possibly more, it it did not decline, while inflation would ease, or worsen, depending upon unforeseeable conditions. As a consequence, the price of stocks and bonds would advance or retreat and investors should buy or sell securities of all kinds with confidence but with caution. business manager worth his salt and tax shelter, he said, agreed with this forecast and Mr. Glizzard was ready to stake his reputation on it, The Economist it is misunderstood and ignored, it has done too little to produce university graduates suited to go out in the world and do nan-science Jobs with efficient modesty. When scientists pretend they provide definitive and dictatorial answers to the most important questions, they can make incredible asses of themselves.

During the ecological debates in recent years, many eminent scientists have shown an astonishingly unscholarly ignorance about such economic entities as the elasticities of supply and demand and substitution, or about how the population growth projections have altered somewhat. DURING THE NINETEENTH century, it was often said that what Manchester did today, the rest of the world would do tomorrow. During the 20th century, Manchester has more often been doing what Japan yesterday modernized itself away from doing, but with at least one exception. For about 10 years, Manchester University has been running a degree course called liberal studies In science. About 100 undergraduates and about 50 graduates are working In the department at 'present.

Nine-tenths of those completing the undergraduate course go into non-science Jobs. They are among the most sought-after graduates from the university. Each student chooses to do either physics with engineering, chemistry, or life sciences. He spends about half his time look- Evening grosbeaks Like plump canaries In jet and saffron-yellow plumage They deftly husk strewn sunflower seeds With a quick scissors snip. And In a flock lake flight to sheltering grove Leaving me with dream of summer.

Season of ripe wild strawberries In a secret patch; of ox-eye daisies With petals one-Move, three magic words; And now the whisper of a leaf In grandfather's pasture maple tree Where shade fs a circle wide and Dream of summer, And canaries Jet and saffron-yellow Darting over silent fields beyond. At the C. D. Howe Institute Mr. Snifkln conferred with Professor Julian Garble who distinguished himself a year ago by announcing that 1977 was sure to produce a worldwide boom but, as he remarked, the prediction.

was misunderstood by the Ignorant press. It had failed to remember the "law of marginal error" which bears his famous name. Since the public could not.be expected to understand technical language, Professor Garble kindly described the next year's events In simple laymen's diction. "Assuming the velocity of money," he said, "and the para- mzr, -f ajar Ross SmithJournal The spires of East, West, and Centre Block seen from Mackenzie Avenue. Britain plans for scientist statesmen OXFORD university's course in classics and philosophy, known as Greats, trained many generations of those who spread Britain's empire around the world.

For a couple of generations, Oxford's Modern Greats course philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) has been equally notable in educating those who have presided over Britain's relative decline: Sir Harold Wilson and Edward Heath were among its alumni. A little knowledge of economics has been widely dispersed throughout Britain's establishment during the 50 years when Britain's real GNP per head has dropped from about fourth in the world to about 40th. But science is still out on a limb. Britain's cleverest schoolchildren close the door against further science at 14 or 15, when they give up maths. Those who persist in science are often ostracized from the mainstream of leadership in governement and industry.

They pursue separate careers in laboratories, while the accountants and marketing men (to whom scientists are too recondite to talk) climb to top obs. Too few of the country's leaders have, like Margaret Thatcher (chemistry) and David Owen (neurology), a scientific training. A little knowledge of science should be more widely dispersed in Britain's establishment. i The science community is much to blame for Britain's division into what C. P.

Snow called the two cultures. Though frequently bemoaning the fact that Ottawa. LENORE A. PRATT. 6 ing at science from other perspectives (philosophical, historical, sociological).

A few other universities 'run courses which have a little in common with this one. One problem is that the stu-. dents must have specialized in science and mathematics before coming to university academics are not interested In teaching the elementary stuff to undergraduates. Another (less recognized) problem is that the standards of writing what might be called expository English have declined in the schools, partly because modem or television-age play-of-the-week literary English is more concerned with dreamily expressing beautiful thoughts, or crudely expressing prurient ones than with explaining how to do anything. But the courses have shown that the link between physics and philosophy has so far been under-exploited.

Philosophy-of-sccince departments exist in many universities. But they are too much about how scientists traditionally do their work. Talk to a physicist about fundamental questions concerning the origin of the universe, the possibility of the future affecting the past as well as the other way around, and the breakdown of cause and effect in aspects of quantum physics and you will find that physics and mainstream' philosophy are closely related. PHILOSOPHY IS the common Ingredient of both Greats and Modern Greats. It could be the central feature of a new course, Science Greats probably consisting of philosophy, physics and technology.

In the technology side of the course students would not learn how to design a computer, but they would study individual Inventions like the Jet engine, television, Integrated circuits and antibiotics, they would acquire basic understanding of how these things work, would examine the intellectual climate which pavej the way for their Invention and would then study how they were translated from raw discoveries Into marketable products. Anybody who learned this last should be welcomed with open arms by tho British meters of reflation and deflation, with productivity based on a multiplier of variables, but disregarding the current accounts deficit, together with disequilibrium of equivalent factors, seasonally adjusted, and so forth, any child can see the resulting quotient, as already confirmed by the OECD, the IMF and the SPCA. In a word, that Is the Inevitable rationale give a few percentage points one way or the other." IN OTTAWA, a cabinet spokesman said that the government's Arm policy, though usually misrepresented by the media, could be stated in the plainest English. "The Canadian people," he warned, "must restrain their demands on the economy, save their money and lend It to the national treasury but, at the same time, spend freely on con-, sumer goods to stimulate prosperity, as Prime Minister Trudeau has so wisely recommended. Otherwise the economy may collapse or, worse, the government itself." A spokesman for the Conservative Opposition argued that Canada must repudiate this obsolete doctrine, return to the historic rules of the free market but make certain, above all, that cheap foreign goods were not imported to undermine domestic prices and aggravate inflation.

Simon Cuddle, the noted researcher of the New Democratic party, agreed that imports were breaking down Canada's wage scale and ruining its workers when their purchase of automobiles and speed boats had increased by only about 20 per cent in the last year. "As socialists," Mr. Cuddle added, "we're obligated to help the poor nations but not by using the products of a scandalously underpaid labor force. No, we can best help these unfortunate victims of capitalism by setting the good example of a high living standard. It is for them to imitate It by their own methods which we have no right to influence.

All the workers of the world must unite to sever the brutal chains of greedy monopolistic exploitation but they cannot afford to invade each other's markets. That way lies depression and hunger for everyone." MR. SNIFKIN went to all provinces and met the 10 premiers. Their collective judgment was expressed by an anonymous spokesman in specific, unequivocal terms: "It's useless for Mr. Trudeau to talk In mere principles and abstractions.

We need bold action, and now." When Mr. Snifkln ventured to ask what action, the premiers suggested (so Mr. Snifkln was told by the anonymous spokesman) that they had no responsibility for federal policy and would not think of trespassing on Ottawa's jurisdiction which, however, should be decentralized, more or less. Even Mr. Snlfkin's acute Intelligence was slightly confused by now and he sought out Augustus Jumble, president of the Bank of the Universe, who Is rightly considered the ultimate Canadian master of economics.

Over a three-hour luncheon at his Montreal club, Mr. Jumble protested that only the Illiterate media found any mystery In the prospects of the New Year. "It all comes down to a perfectly obvious fact," Mr. Jumble said as he drained his final martini. "The people of Canada will have to face their actual situation, tighten their belts and sweat It out.

Instead, they're fleeing their own coutnry, spending the winter In some foreign den of luxury and piling up a travel deficit of almost two billions. The ugly truth Is that Canada has gone soft and until It recovers its old pioneer virtues there's no hope of better times ahead. Yes, sweat It out. That's the answer." Unfortunately, Mr. Jumble was compel'.

to end the Inter-vl at this point and board nls personal Jet plane for the Bahamas where, as he emphasized, matters of business vital to the natloo required his presence for several months. Mr. Snifkln, unable to sweat It out in the Montreal climate, tottered, a little uncertainly, Into snowbank but his mind was clear at last.